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Terms Which Have Disappeared

niv

Familiar Face
Messages
51
Location
Austin, Texas
I passed up a great opportunity, the reasons for which I will not go into now, to learn Spanish while growing up. Consequently, later in life I heard many "colloquialisms" while working in a largely Hispanic community I didn't understand. When asked their meaning, my Dad always explained "It means 'sweet potato.'" I remember thinking - at the time - "wow - local Hispanics sure have a lot of words for 'sweet potato!"
 

Inkstainedwretch

One Too Many
Messages
1,037
Location
United States
I always sort of assumed the ones I was eating had very little actual veal in them -- probably more elderly bulls all ground up with extenders and then given just a whisper of genuine veal for the sake of the name. They certainly didn't look like the actual veal meat you find now in the premium section of the butcher's case.
It's a similar situation with mutton. Americans won't eat mutton. They just know they don't like it. They will eat lamb. In consequence of which, Americans eat the oldest lambs on earth. It would be sold as mutton anywhere else, but Americans won't eat it if you call it that.
 
Messages
17,196
Location
New York City
Yeah...like being pummeled by Mike Tyson.

Best Mike Tyson quote: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

He captured an entire sleeve of Game Theory study with that one.

Also, basically he re-worked (knowingly or not) the famous Prussian Field General's - Helmuth Von Moltke - quote, which, over time, has morphed into: "No plan survives contact with the enemy."
 

BlueTrain

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,073
Almost any kind of music can be made popular by increasing the sound level, giving it a pounding beat and dressing the musicians in clothes most people only wear to clean out the garage, hence the term garage band. It even helps a little if the audience has to stand for the whole performance. Flashing light, smoke and huge video screens add to the experience. It may only work for Western music, though, but that covers half the world. Ravi Shankar would probably have said it works for any music.

Anyone remember the "Hooked on Classics" series of recordings from 30 some years ago?

Alternatively, if it isn't popular music, then what is it?
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,728
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
You could make an argument that "popular music" in the exactlng sense simply means "music of the people," as opposed to music produced on commission for the aristocracy. It doesn't mean that the music is necessarily "popular" in the sense that the majority of people like it, simply that it arises spontaneously without being cultivated. That kind of definition meant more in the days when aristocrats kept musicians and composers like pets, but I think it's the origin of the term.

Today, it's simply used in its broadest sense to apply to any form of music that isn't "classical." Kazoo bands, musical saw players, Death Metal, Slim Whitman, Thelonious Monk, and Freddie Fisher's Schnickelfritzers are all "popular music" in that sense, even if they aren't all that "popular."
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
Today, it's simply used in its broadest sense to apply to any form of music that isn't "classical." Kazoo bands, musical saw players, Death Metal, Slim Whitman, Thelonious Monk, and Freddie Fisher's Schnickelfritzers are all "popular music" in that sense, even if they aren't all that "popular."

And why do you disparage kazoo bands, Miss Maine?
 

BlueTrain

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,073
Well, "music of the people" is generally thought of as folk music and "real" folk music may or may not be popular and it may or may not be any good, either. The so-called folk music popularity beginning in the late 1950s had its roots far in the past but it's questionable whether or not it was really folk music. The fact that many folk musicians and groups of that era were decidedly left-wing and thus identified with "the people," some of them anyway, confuses the issue.

I happen to like European folk music, especially that of the German-speaking areas, as well as Czech and Slovenian. Even there, it has to be label "real" folk music, which I believe is written as "Echte Volksmusik."
 

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